


how to say something without words

by m_feys



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Brothers, Character Study, Feelings, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Music, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Season/Series 01, Trauma, coping with the world, its about both of them, maybe? i think it counts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-11-02 10:57:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20722598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_feys/pseuds/m_feys
Summary: “I would just sing the chorus over and over because I couldn’t remember all the words. But it… reminded me of home. Reminded me of you.”





	how to say something without words

**Author's Note:**

> not totally sure when this is set but im thinking sometime in the year between season 1 & 2

It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough to say. Most of the time he kept his thoughts close to his chest. Other times he didn’t know how to weave them into words. But both of them, Will and Jonathan, had found things that were easier than any of that.

For Jonathan it was photography. Candids have been, and always would be, his favorite. It was so much simpler to interface with people when it was just a frozen moment, saved for later. A thousand unsaid things he could never seem to recognize in the moment, all caught up in a frame. Stilled and silent, so you could pour over it— forever if you wanted. So much less complicated than the bustle of conversation. People were always so loud. His dad had always been so loud.

For Will, it’s drawing. A way that he can shape the world by his own hand. Everything from scribbles in the margins of his schoolwork to binders filled with masterpieces drawn on notebook paper. He appreciated that it could be as simple or as intricate as he wanted. That it was allowed to be strange and that he could find his own understanding, so unlike the real world. He could use every color in the box. He could make sense of things that shouldn’t make sense. Create things that couldn’t exist. 

The world was strange and bright and full of curiosities. Full of moments and details that no one paid attention to. At the end of the day, that’s what drew both of them, to capture it the best way they knew how.

Music is also theirs. Their connection, their intersection. It was their steady constant when they weren’t sure when the shouting matches would begin. But it wasn’t just that. Music linked them to one another, beyond a need for shelter in a storm. Music also let them come out of hiding. Helped each of them learn to be himself. To harmonize with things they never said aloud.

Music was something to seek out when the rest of the world didn’t make sense. Or when it was falling apart at the seams. Or just when _you_ didn’t make sense to the _world_ as much as it never make sense to you.

* * *

“You know, I sang this, all the time.” And Jonathan knows he did— heard him singing along to it ever since he first played him that mixtape. But he also knows from the far off look in his eye that Will means _something else_.

He turns down the music, neither of them nodding along to the beat any longer. Every time they listen to this, it reminds him of that day. With the sounds of their parents fighting in the other room— drowned out by good music. And Will, smiling at him and saying he really likes it. And all the days after when Jonathan could hear him listening to his mixtape, that song, through the walls.

For Will, hearing the song makes him feel something similar, a familiar fondness, undercut by a current of panic. But in an entirely different context.

“Oh yeah?” Jonathan prompts softly after Will doesn’t continue, only staring at something he’ll never see.

“Yeah… in the Upside Down.” The words are like sand in his throat, heavy and cloying and rough. But he says it because he doesn’t want to feel like he’s backing down. He doesn’t want it to just be the _nameless incident_. It has a name, and he would use it no matter how sick it made him. He would use it because he was there, it happened. It was real, and it had a name.  
He swallows back the feeling, twitching his lips up into a smile. Still not looking at Jonathan, not looking at anything, really. “Like it… helped me to keep from going crazy.”

It grounded him. Helped him remember home was close, he could get back there. It made him think of Jonathan, of that day, when he first played it for him.

Jonathan reaches for him at that, tears pricking warmth into his eyes as he secures an arm around Will’s shoulder and holds his brother close against his side.

“Yeah?” he asks again, voice thick with sorrow.

“Yeah,” Will agrees, “I would just sing the chorus over and over because I couldn’t remember all the words. But it… reminded me of home. Reminded me of you.”

Jonathan folds his lips together, unable to speak for the moment and instead leans to press his cheek to Will’s hair, soft and neat as it always was. “It reminds me of you too,” Jonathan tells him, words choked and unsteady. He shifts, pressing a kiss to the top of his little brother's head.

The song is still playing quietly and it doesn’t really fit the mood. But that’s ok, that’s how it always was in this house. Things just didn't make sense sometimes. So you find a way for yourself to clear up the picture again. A way to fit broken pieces of your life back together. Something to help it make sense again.

Jonathan wonders if he should turn it off. If hearing it brings up bad memories, reminders of that place and that time. He wishes he could have done more, could be doing more. Wishes that he even knew what it was he should be doing. But Jonathan is drawn from his worries as he hears it. Slowly, Will starts humming along.

“_If I go there will be trouble_,” he murmurs the lyrics along with the cassette, “_and if I stay it will be double_.”

Jonathan lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, smiling with all the bittersweet memories he holds dear. Gripping his brother’s shoulder tight before letting go to give him some space, and joining in, “_so you gotta let me know_.”  
Will looks up at him at that, _actually_ looks at him, and he’s smiling now.

They’re grinning at each other as their voices pick up. They’re singing the second verse in time and bobbing their heads along with the music.

“_Yeah you gotta let me know, should I stay or should I go._”

**Author's Note:**

> i know its probly cliche as fuck but i had to have at least one fic with The Song™ in it. anyway, i love thme ;-;
> 
> :P i dont feel as good about this fic as some of my other stranger things fics, but i think it turned out ok. i was pretty tired during most of the writing/editing, but let me know what you think. comments and kudos are appreciated <3


End file.
